


To the Caul

by isabellahazard (cafemusain)



Category: The London Life (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Childbirth, F/M, egregious misuse of phonetic cornish accents, rampant superstition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:15:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6887473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafemusain/pseuds/isabellahazard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bee Wilson continues a long line of Rosdew babies born at Roscarrock, much to her new husband's chagrin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To the Caul

“Why, tedn’t natural fer a man t’be in the birthin room!”

“I’m sure I’d have died of the shame if Ned had--”

“Would someone _please_ send for Old Nan!”

A week past her time, Bee Wilson was just about finished listening to advice. From swimming, to eating salted pilchards with pepper, to jumping up and down, to engaging in sports of a more delicate nature (ultimately unsuccessful due to the enormous impediment in the shape of her midsection), nothing had brought on the baby, and now that her pains had begun, the women assembled for the purpose seemed more interested in arguing than doing anything productive.

“I’ll go an’ rouse ‘er; she’s like as not t’be restin this time o’ day.” Bess Lowrie was near as much a mother to Bee as Susanna Rosdew had been and, if the rumors were to be believed, her aunt by blood. Occupying an unsteady position between servant and family, she’d nonetheless do as Bee asked. Old Nan, surname irrelevant (and, often as not, forgotten) was less a midwife in any official sense than an impossibly ancient miner’s wife, renowned in the region for her birthing knowledge. What her hands lacked in strength would be made up by her daughter, Young Nan. Both had attended Bee’s own birth.

If she hadn’t orchestrated the occupation herself once her pains started in the morning, Bee would have thought it fortunate that her husband was out walking the countryside with Bobbie and Piksie. As it was, she could expect him to come barrelling in as soon as he saw Bess hurry off towards the village, ready to argue the house down for his right to sit beside Bee in the coming hours. The impending grandmother had little enough to compare to her son-in-law, Ned Rosdew having been made from a rather more traditional fatherly mold. To wit, he had been drunk as a lord anytime he happened to be ashore for a birth, willing to share his joy with any who passed by, and weepy once the clean babe was laid in his arms. Perhaps to the best, he was currently at sea--he might have tried to drink Ira into submission.

Bee could faintly hear Julia rounding up the boys, home from school, who would scatter quick enough when they realized what was afoot. Susan had gone to make tea, her perpetual cure for ills physical, emotional, and spiritual. For what she guessed would be the last time today, she had the room to herself, and stood by the old spinet, plucking idly at the keys. Another pain came, after which she played and paced by turns.

“Best to distract yourself, my love,” Susanna murmured, pressing a cup into Bee’s hands and gently stroking her hair. “Drink up.” Whatever was wafting from the hot liquid in her hands did not indicate tea, or at least, not tea alone. Susanna countered her daughter’s questioning look with the quirk of a pale eyebrow, impressive despite Susanna Rosdew’s distinct disadvantage of height, particularly over her daughter. Bee quaffed whatever was in the cup--foul-tasting and herbaceous, with the burn of rum behind it. “Jules will keep the boys busy, and help if she’s needed. Though of course, you’ve no want of help. Surfeit, really.”

“The back bedroom is fast becoming a circus,” Bee agreed. It was simply the way of their family--Bess would keep away if asked, but her daughter Lou would not, and there were the Nans to consider, and Susanna herself. To say nothing of the yet-undecided matter of Ira’s presence.

As the next pain got its feet beneath it, Bee sat on the piano bench in preparation. Susanna took the teacup and replaced it with her hand, fine-boned and dainty. “We’ll want to get you upstairs after this one,” she observed mildly, and clucked in sympathy as Bee groaned and panted. “There’s a brave girl. It’ll be over soon; you’ll know when you’ve come to the hard part.” When it had passed as promised, Bee laid her head against her mother, catching her breath, and did not let go her hand.

A commotion outside. Both women looked out the window to see a trio of female silhouettes--Bess’s solid height, the cronelike figure of Old Nan, and her improbably stout daughter. “Roscarrock! En’t been ‘ere for ten year or more. The upcountry girl ‘ad another, then?”

“No, ‘tes her daughter, Miss Bee.” The aforementioned rose to greet them and was gently pressed down by her mother.

“The mermaid birth! She old enough, now? Can’t be--well. Twenty year or more! Rare, birth like that.” The chatter accompanied them in. Bee’s birth had been something of a local legend. A doctor might have called it _en caul_ , but the locals merely called it mermaid: a tremendous sign of supernatural favour, and the making of Susanna’s reputation. In a community where ten miles down the road was practically abroad, that the scion of one of their oldest families had married a far-flung English girl had rankled, but when she had brought forth the luckiest of all births, they had silently decided she fit among them. The caul, much to Susanna’s disgust, was dried and presented to Ned, to keep him safe at sea. A sailor with a caul, as everyone knew, could not be drowned.

Little attention was paid to Bee as the Nans settled in, warming to the subject of the caul, its present location, the likelihood that Bee’s own child would bear the same mark. “P’raps some of it. Rare you ever get it whole, as ‘ers was. I did ‘ear of a family over past Truro, ‘ad it three generations runnin’, but that were years back, and they ‘ad a physician.” The subsequent clucking indicated their homespun opinion that doctors had no place in a birthing room, same as any man.

Ira and Bobbie chose that moment to return, caught up in the flurry of cloak removal and, as if to compound the chaos, Bee’s next pain.

“There we are! Let it come, child. When did ‘er pains start?”

“Early this morn,” Bess supplied, which caused Ira to repeat the phrase in disbelief. Bee remained on the piano bench, groaning.

“Bee! Why didn’t you--”

“Hush! Don’ fuss at ‘er.” With the impunity of the extremely old, Old Nan cared little for distinctions of rank or class when a birth was concerned. She had lived long enough to decide that all came into the world the same, and out, too.

Pain passed, Bee smiled weakly at her husband and stepdaughter. “Bobbie, Jules has the boys out in the back garden. You’ll want to--” but the prospect of escaping the mayhem with her young uncles was enough, and with a nod Bobbie had scampered off towards the other children. Ira rushed forward, and Susanna let him take her hand as she recovered. The burbling consensus was that it would be a few hours, yet, “particular with a first.”

“You might have mentioned.”

“And have you flapping about like a great broody hen? I’ve enough of them.” In the moment it took him to come up with a response, the rest of the women had fluttered in and were insisting she move upstairs.

“Afore yer stuck down ‘ere, birthin’ in yer mam’s sittin’ room, Missy Bee.” The old endearment from Bess spurred her to action, and with Lou, who had emerged from the kitchen, and Bess beneath each arm, she waddled upstairs with a backward glance thrown to her bewildered husband, the view eventually blocked by the ascending Nans. Susanna stayed to pat his hand.

“She’ll be fine. Plenty of old hands to take care of her,” she said gently, and turned to follow the rest of the women up.

For the first hour or so, he stayed put, half-heartedly attempting to read a newspaper that, even if he had not read it once before, would have failed to make any impression on his occupied mind. An orange barn cat came in through a window and sat in the late afternoon sunshine by his feet, having determined it would not have any treats from him, sprawled in the companionable silence of animals. He sat watching the creature, whose ears suddenly pricked towards the staircase as Bee’s muffled groans changed timbre and volume, and Ira found he could no longer sit waiting. He took the stairs two at a step and pounded at the door, soon greeted by Lou slipping out to heat the water.

“She alrigh'? Nowt’s amiss?” At his grave concern, Lou only sighed gently and sidled past him.

“I never seen ‘er taken so, but ‘tis the way o’ things, and she be no worse off than any other woman in ‘er place. Now there’s water to ‘eat, sur.” With that she curtseyed and continued about her business, leaving Ira outside the door to that mysterious world of women--a world from which Rachel had never returned. The scene was different, the players changed, but that anxious dread settled back in his stomach, remembrance too heavy to allow any guttering, nervous spark of excitement.

He beat the door again once the cries subsided. “Bee? You alrigh' in there?” Her call of reassurance was very faint. Susanna’s face appeared at the door, and in her sternness Ira could see where Bee had got her strength.

“None the better for your banging about,” his mother-in-law said shortly, before closing the door in his astonished face. He sat himself in the hallway, unwilling to be even the distance of the stairs and hallway.

Inside the room, Bee’s energy was, for the first time in adult memory, flagging. Figures came in and out of focus and the only timekeeping she could note was the increasing frequency of the pains. Pacing, sitting, lying back, kneeling at the bedside--none had sped her labor any. She had been plied with nothing but the foul-tasting tea, in which she had rapidly-decreasing interest, and then there was Ira banging at the door, surely terrified.

“Time’s a-comin’ she’ll ‘ave to push,” Young Nan observed. “Get yer strength up, girl.”

With a childish huff she laid back on the bed. Susanna shook out her hand as she closed the door on her son-in-law, fingers cramped from being clutched. “Couldn’t he just--”

All of the women in the room looked at her in astonishment, with the exception of Old Nan, who simply raised her wiry brows in vague interest. “Tedn’t the way o’ things,” Young Nan said briskly. Bess pushed the hair off of Bee’s forehead. “No sense lettin’ em worry theirsselves. Gettin’ in the way. No, ‘tes best if ‘e stays put.”

The next pain began to gear up and she whimpered, not yet ready for tears, but very much exhausted. “He’s worried,” she insisted. “Last time--”

“Well this be this time,” Bess said firmly. “No cause for ‘im to see things ‘e oughtn’t. No cause for ‘im to be about, worryin’ you.”

She held onto that strong hand until the pain passed, her cries this time sharp and desperate. The banging came again. “I won’ be kept out! Let me see my wife!” She could hear the fear in his tone, and it ratcheted up her own, which quickly redirected into building anger.

“Judas God, all the knocking is what’s worrying me!”

“Did she say worried? Why’s she worried?”

“You see?” She found some last reserve of angry strength, fierce despite her current infirmity, sitting up from the pillows with brow furrowed. “Whatever he’s imagining has to be worse. Let him in.”

“But--”

It was Old Nan who came to Bee’s defense. “Stranger things ‘ave happened, child, than a man in the birthin’ chamber. Best to keep mother ‘appy.” She went to the door and Ira burst through, heedless of his mother-in-law or Bess or anybody else. His entry seemed to buoy his wife’s spirits, and she smiled to see him. He took both hands with great tenderness.

“You alrigh'?” And in his words hung the fear of years past, the fear he’d tried so hard to keep in check throughout her waiting, as her waist thickened and she grew ever more ready to meet their child. The fear that the child would take away the mother, as it had been with his last.

“Better now.”

In the end, Ira Benjamin Wilson came into the world at eight in the evening, unhindered by any caul, but his birth was no less remarkable for it. Near-silent and fussing, he did not seem to care for the brisk hands of those cleaning and wrapping him, but upon being placed in his father’s arms, promptly began to scream, to the delight of the whole room. His mother laughed and flung herself back on the pillows, ready to receive her treasure, pain forgotten entirely. "'andsome little mite," Old Nan said approvingly. "Fine crop o' hair," Bess agreed. The afterbirth came easily, the bleeding slowed, and the new mother went happily to sleep with her husband and new baby nestled beside her.

New-minted sister Bobbie slipped in and whispered, “is that all?” with an expectant look at her father, as if she’d known all along. The cat downstairs climbed back outside, and the Nans were escorted home full of felicitations.

“An easy birth. Never ‘ad a doubt. Strong stock, them Rosdews, and the upcountry girl ever did a fine job with ‘ers. It were the caul, of course.” There were murmurs of superstitious agreement. “Devilish lucky.”

Several miles away, baby Ben fussed in his sleep and was quieted by his father. His mother slept on with a smile.


End file.
